18% of all chat users will make a purchase

More customers and larger average purchases

18% of all chat users will buy and chat users buy 25-39% more.
60-80% of chat users would not have made a purchase without the chat-service.
A customer that uses chat is 3 times more likely to perform a repeat purchase than a customer that doesn’t.

75-90% will receive an answer to their query on first contact. We respond to a chat starter in 9,7 seconds.

1€ invested in our services will generate sales of 8-22€ .

Live chat–service influence on the average purchase size for the online store

Average purchase

0-80€

80-200€

200€ >

Average growth

39%

33%

25%

Better service experience and customer satisfaction

A high street shop invariably offers an opportunity for personal customer service and we believe that a similar personal customer service should also be available on the net. Our product Live chat will pay for itself many times over.

Live chat solves a problem that is important for online stores

Typically, only a small portion of website visitors will become customers. According to Forrester Research, more than half of consumers said they will reject their purchases unless they receive a quick answer to their question about the product (Making proactive chat work, 2010).

However, at present the vast majority of online retailers offer customer support by email only (info@company.com) or via a contact form (complete and submit). These are slow ways of serving and require, in addition to patience, a lot of effort by the consumer. Nearly half of online consumers agree that personal costumer service is one of the key features of the online store (Forrester Research, 2010). Some of the larger online stores offer a separate service number, but few visitors want to make a phone call to receive service.

The live chat link has a number of benefits. As an easy pop-up window, it does not require a transfer of the consumer’s attention from the website which he is interested in. The chat customer service agent can see the visitor’s IP address (country/region/company), which website the visitor is currently on and how long the customer has been on the site. In addition, a particular advantage of live chat is that the customer service agent can proactively open a connection and ask the visitor, “Can I help you?” The same agent is also able to simultaneously manage more than one conversation at the same time. As a result, an increasing number of online stores are planning to offer chat services.

How does live chat sales service differ from customer service work?

The typical Customer Service Agent waits passively for a phone call or e-mail and deals with questions like “where is my order” and “if I order now, when will the parcel arrive”. Our Chat Customer Service Agents are active and can approach a potential customer with a chat invite (just as a sales person in a high street store would approach a browsing customer). They are able to type more than 250 characters per minute which is sufficient for the handling of three parallel conversations if necessary.

The key point is that sales service requires a much higher level of skills than managing any other type of customer service. In the department store Sokos’ online beauty store, we have beauticians. The electrical retailer Musta Pörssi, is looked after by our home electronics and information technology team. If the chat service is managed in parallel with other issues, it will be impossible to maintain sales orientation. However, any chat must be lead and followed through as a sales conversation, so that results are produced.